What to Do When You're New to Product Marketing

Maggie Bean Product Marketer and Host of the New to Product Marketing Podcast on the Compete Network. She joined the Competitive Enablement Show to talk about her biggest learnings as a product marketer and season three of her show.

‍♂️ Walk a mile in your reps’ shoes ‍♂️

Writing battlecard content in marketing lingo is a cardinal sin often committed by competitive enablement pros. That’s where empathy comes in.

Getting in your reps’ shoes and understanding the realities they face every day is something Maggie strives for whenever she’s in content creation mode.

“Put yourself in their point of view of how they’re doing their work. Make one-on-one connections and forge those relationships individually. It’s really made a difference for us.”

Prioritize one-on-one time with each of your sellers — or as many as possible —and ask the questions that’ll help you better understand their needs.

What’s working?
What’s not working?
What do you need?
How can I help?

The more you understand the pains and needs of your end-users, the better you’re able to enable them.

Connect with as many as you can individually, and reflect on the requirements and challenges of their job. You’ll be a better product marketer for it.

Every PMM role is different; find one that matches your skillsets

Every product marketer needs to have a diverse skillset. And each product marketing role will dictate that some skills are used more than others.

(Check out our 5 Competitive Intelligence Skills You Need to Master article to dive into the five most important skills)

Maggie’s advice is to be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses, and find a product marketing role that plays to those strengths.

“It’s important as a candidate to learn what type of product marketing role you want to be in and find one that matches your interests.”

Roles heavy on enablement will require a high degree of storytelling and communication. Whereas ones focused more on research will involve more individual contributing.

Set yourself up for success by getting as clear as possible on what a PMM role will entail, and make sure it’s the right fit for you.

Learn from the experts

Maggie loved talking to the experts so much she launched a whole podcast so she could do more of it. For those not quite at the podcast stage, the best way to learn is through connecting with your peers.

Thirty minute coffee chats, connecting on LinkedIn, joining a community, the fastest way to get going is to learn from others.

“Most of my learnings come from conversations with different product marketer, going beyond what’s happening at your own company and really spreading your wings and learning from others”

Maggie says discovering Sharebird’s Women in Product Marketing podcast was another breakthrough in her PMM journey.

This discovery, coupled with dozens of coffee chats with peers — chats that featured a ton of great learnings for new product marketings — was the catalyst for Maggie starting her own podcast!

If you’re new to product marketing, looking to deeper your knowledge or gain new perspectives, you should check out Season 3 of New to Product Marketing, powered by the Compete Network.

What to Do When You’re New to Product Marketing